


The Warlord

by codedredalert



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Asian supernatural AU, Folklore, Gen, Mythology - Freeform, Oneshot, kitsune john
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 03:14:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7025974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codedredalert/pseuds/codedredalert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A hundred years ago, a warlord set the fields ablaze. On her shoulder rode a black fox with eyes blue as lightning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Warlord

 

Two baby girls washed up on the beach in a wax basket. The cartographer of a fishing village took them in. She died when they were thirteen.

They had white hair and sunrise-sunset eyes.

They were beautiful, like seashells and the bones of small things.

===/\===

Sakuraso took up her mother’s craft with a hunger for learning. If she were a man, she would have taken the national exams and become a scholar. But she was not, so she made maps, with misfortune marked in purple ink before it materialised.

The village people did not question her.

(They called her a shaman and she smiled.)

Akemi was more of the people. Unlike her sister, she laughed and joined their festivals, and worked the fields alongside them. Her skill with the bow was remarkable.

(They made her a priestess and loved her.)

===/\===

There was a drought. There was famine. The gods of the fields needed blood.

The people threw their priestess into a chasm from atop the mountain at dawn.

===/\===

It has been years. She wore black now. She would always wear black from now on.

Sakuraso stood in a clearing, biting her lip.

Her circle had been destroyed. The talisman rope was frayed and snapped, the markings scuffed into uselessness. The ash and salt was scattered from the neat cones she’d made.

“Y’know,” someone started. The voice was a young man’s, still just this side of childhood. “If you wanted to catch something useful, you should probably hire someone with more power.”

“The circle is meant to amplify power so that is unnecessary,” she said conversationally, trying to find the source of the sound.

“Heh, that won’t help if you don’t have power to _begin_ with.”

“Ah, but I do have power,” Sakuraso informed him.

“Yeah,” the voice said. “Not really.”

“You must be very powerful then,” she said smoothly. “May I see your form?”

There was a rustle in the bushes and a black fox with sky blue eyes appeared. It had two tails.

Black foxes were good luck.

“Hello,” Sakuraso smiled. She knelt and stretched out one hand. “I would deal with you.”

“Neat,” the fox grinned.

===/\===

He wouldn’t give his name, so she called him Blue, like his eyes and the sheen of his fur. 

She told him about Akemi. She told him what she wanted. He sat opposite her and listened to it all intently, even as the sun threw their shadows across the clearing. 

He waited as she paused to light her fire.

The moon was overhead when she finished, and he hadn’t moved.

“You’re a good storyteller,” he said. “I like you. You’re like one of us.”

She inclined her head in thanks and he continued.

“But you’re not. You’re human, and humans usually end up regretting things like this.”

Sakuraso thought of festivals, and of Akemi in the centre of them, laughing and drinking rice wine at thirteen. She thought of the cold mountain winds against her heated skin as she’d run after the procession, as Akemi in all white robes was thrown from the cliff. She thought of the big speech after the first rains, the declaration of better times to come.

“I won’t,” she promised. “Lend me your power.”

He tilted his head, measuring her.

“Okay,” Blue said. “I’ll need your name.”

“ _Primrose_ ,” Sakuraso replied instantly. It was a foreign word she read in a book, and she liked the way it rolled off her tongue. It was accurate enough. (Sakuraso was desperation, _primrose_ was eternal love. They were two sides of the same coin. They fit.)

His eyes flared blue and for a moment they weren’t sky but fire, if fire could burn blue. He touched his cold nose to her forehead and she felt… impossible and powerful, but only on the outside. Like her skin was the surface of the sun, but the rest of her was plain black ink in water.

“It’s a promise,” he said. “Your name for my armies and your life for this loan.”

She smiled.

“That sounds fair,” she said. “I thought you would at least say my name though.”

“It’s hard to say,” he complained. “Puremurozu. Purimerosu? Roze.”

“The last one was almost correct,” she teased.

“Rude!” he barked, but a moment later he smiled, wide and white-toothed. “Hey I think I got it. _Rose_.”

(They both knew he didn’t have to say it to have it.)

===/\===

The village burned loudly, but not as loudly as Rose thought it would. It was more crackle and pop and things giving way under weight than screaming.

It burned a long time.

===/\===

“What now?” he asked.  

“March on, I suppose,” she replied. Her eyes swept the barren fields, and she found no solace there. (They killed her sister for less than this. She was still angry, even with them gone.)

(If Rose had been a man, she would have been a scholar and they would both have been safe.)

“I’ll go with you,” he said, like there was ever any doubt.

===/\===

After one village, they called her a criminal.

After three, they called her a demon.

After her first city, she was a warlord.

===/\===

“Isn’t this enough,” Blue said.

“No,” Rose replied.

The fox shifted. He was practically her familiar now, depicted in all the paintings they made of her, riding on her shoulder.

“ _Rose_ ,” he said, and she tilted her head to listen better. (He was always sparing in the use of her name.) “Listen, you could stop here. You could be happy here.”

She could. She had all these ideas about what to do with a city, when she was younger. She could structure it with irrigation like the fields. She could change governance, protect people.

She still had so much hate to spare.

“My generals are waiting for me,” she said.

===/\===

She swept six cities then turned her eyes on the capital.

Her battles were always violent, but this would be the one they remembered her by.

It would be the first she lost. 

===/\===

“Rose isn’t my real name,” she confessed. She had thought falling in battle would hurt more, but it only throbbed a little bit. The rush of battle, she supposed. She’d read a lot about that, but she’d only ever been calm in battles before.

Blue blinked down at her.

“Of course it is,” he said. His tails beat against the ground and threw a light cloud of dust into the air. All light turned to halos.

“I made it up,” she said. “It’s a word from another language.”

“Okay,” he replied, slowly. “But that doesn’t make it any less real.”

She tried to explain, tried to tell him ‘ _no, no, you don’t understand. I am Sakuraso, the cartographer’s daughter. Hayashi Sakuraso of the little fishing village in the east. I make maps and I like reading and I have a sister who I love very, very much_.’

He touched his nose to her forehead. It was less cold than she remembered.

“Not anymore, Rose,” he said. Behind him in the distance was the capital, bright lit against the inky night. It was burning softer than she imagined. Funny how a city could die softer than a village.

She closed her eyes.

===/\===

(After she died, they called her a legend.)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm asian and did like zero research no hate no flame plox


End file.
